


The Devourers

by Malapropian



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Character Study, Codependency, D/s elements, Inspired by Poetry, Love Confessions, M/M, Nipple Play, Possessive Behavior, Unsafe Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-11
Updated: 2018-06-11
Packaged: 2019-05-21 04:35:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14908430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Malapropian/pseuds/Malapropian
Summary: It’s the end of the world, but Peter can’t complain. Not when his days start and stop with Stiles.





	The Devourers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mia6363](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mia6363/gifts).



> Heyyy. I'm alive. This year has been ridiculous. Among other things, I finally got married to Pibroch. We've been spending a lot of time together, but I'm still trying to write my WIPs and a few new things. *points to this fic* 
> 
> Thank you to Originfire/Firebull, Pibroch, and Reclining for reading the draft and telling me that it was good. I'm the only one who made edits, so all the mistakes are the result of me not having a beta.
> 
> Special thanks to Mia6363 for inspiring this with her love of claustrophobic intimacy and post-apocalypse au.

“Tell me again,” Stiles demanded, waking Peter from a miserable sleep at o’dark thirty.

“Tell you what?”

Unimpressed with the answer, Stiles bit him on the shoulder, hard enough to bruise a normal human.

“You know the one.”

To anyone but a werewolf, the room must have been pitch black, but it was bright enough for Peter’s purposes. He propped himself up on an elbow and stared at Stiles, took in the tense lines of the body next to his, the stutter-stop jerk of aborted trembling. Brown eyes blazed, wide and manic, fixed on Peter as though he held the answer to life itself.

It was gratifying enough that he didn’t care about the rude wake up call.

“Having trouble sleeping?” Peter asked the obvious and received a dirty look.

Stiles grunted an affirmative. His shoulders lifted, knife-like under worn cotton. He punched his flat pillow a few times, more habit than hope that it would help, and flopped back down on the rickety cots they’d tied together by the legs.

“I can’t stop thinking about it,” he said, voice hushed, carefully drained of emotion. Stiles only allowed himself a full ration of anger these days. Sadness and regret, even love—he seemed content to portion those out as needed. Just enough to remind himself that he was alive when the others… well. They might not all be dead, but they weren’t here.

Peter couldn’t—wouldn’t—blame him for the defense mechanism. He wasn’t any better.

“Tell me again,” Stiles asked softer, almost begging. “Tell me anything so I can stop seeing it for one fucking night.”

Stiles covered his eyes with a hand that shook, so Peter gathered him up in his skinny arms. There hadn’t been enough food to maintain a werewolf’s metabolism for months. They’d need to move on soon.

But tonight, he could hold Stiles, anchor him to the here and and now with this.

Peter lowered his face to Stiles’ temple and murmured, “Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake and dress them in warm clothes again.”

At the first word, Stiles sagged bonelessly in Peter’s arm, a puppet whose strings had been cut. He curled in, knees brushing Peter’s bony hip as he continued to recite the poem.

Peter whispered it over and over again until he went hoarse, but Stiles’ breathing had evened out and the lines on his face had eased which made it all worth doing. Peter kissed him three times: crown, brow, and lips. Then he slid out of bed and tucked the covers around Stiles.

Morning came soon at the end of the world.

***

“Do you think they’re out there? Alive?” Stiles gestured to the horizon and its ever-present red glow. It looked like something out of a sci-fi dystopia.

Peter needlessly adjusted the straps of his heavy pack. He’d broken it in during their first walk along the coast. It fit his body like a second skin, and he knew the feel of it better than anything else by this point.

For once, Stiles didn’t point out that Peter was avoiding a question. He simply waited, eyes on the faraway redwoods. 

Peter sighed without sound. The end of the world had taught Stiles many things. Patience had been one of them, and hard won at that.

“Some days I think that the odds are good. Some of them must have made it through the explosion.”

“Cataclysm.” Stiles corrected with a break in his voice. The cookware clanked when he rubbed his arms to chase away the shiver.

“The Cataclysm.” Peter tipped his head at Stiles. “They’re smart. Resourceful. Surely some of them must be out here, alive and walking the earth.”

“As though Lydia would walk.”

“Oh of course, you’re right. Lydia would have commandeered a vehicle and minions from the start.”

“Knowing her, she’d have a whole settlement listening to her. She’d be the Governor, or no.” A chuckle escaped Stiles as he warmed to the topic. “She’d totally be Ezekiel. She’d have some kind of post-apocalyptic utopia.”

“Exactly,” Peter agreed. “Queen Lydia.”

“God it sounds like her.” A bittersweet smile twisted Stiles’ lips. “Maybe it’s even true.”

Stiles fell quiet then, and Peter couldn’t continue to the logical conclusion, not if it would disturb the fragile peace of mind he’d won. Instead he allowed Stiles to outpace him by a few steps, just enough to watch his long shadow walk into the Crimson.

 _And on the best days,_ he thought, _the ones where you smile and laugh. On the days when you let me touch you like I have any right. Those are the days when I’m glad they’re gone. My favorite days are the ones when I can sleep beside you. That’s when I pray that they’re dead and no one’s left to take you away._

***

Hours later, they reached a water source near the treeline. Stiles didn’t seem inclined to break the silence, but they didn’t need speech for this. They’d scouted perimeters and made camp thousands of times.

Peter’s lip curled at the alien scents. He kept a running mental catalog of each corrupted lifeform they encountered, but familiarity didn’t breed fondness in this case. 

California wouldn’t smell like home at all if it weren’t for the man that walked beside him and warmed his bed.

“Peter.” Stiles waved him over to where he crouched by the creek bank. “Should we trust it?” 

The creek was small and sluggish. The setting sun had painted it the rust-red of drying blood. It smelled brackish and dirty, like a fetid soup of salt and lichen and crawling things, and underneath it all a trace of ozone—the inescapable taint of magic. 

He wanted to say no, but what came out of his mouth was, “We’ve had worse.”

Stiles nodded and thrust one hand under the red water. “Bracing,” he said, a lift to his voice that Peter interpreted as amusement. “That should make shower time fun.”

Shower time, as Stiles had put it, was accomplished with military quickness and a few hole-pricked plastic bags to act as simultaneous reservoir and showerhead. Lather, rinse, and repeat.

“You sure you don’t want to rinse off?” Stiles asked from beneath the fitful stream. The green rot stench of the water mixed with Stiles’ natural scent. If he turned his head and coughed, it almost reminded him of oakmoss. 

Peter scoffed and stirred instant cereal into thoroughly boiled water. “No thank you,” he said firmly.

“Suit yourself, but we might not see water this good for weeks.”

“You’re disgusting.”

The worst of the water’s odor had boiled off, so the cereal was pleasantly milky, touched by the ghost of apples and sugar.

Peter wavered. A shower, even a camp shower, was a luxury he couldn’t reject.

Damp and passably fresh, Stiles squatted beside him and snaked an arm around Peter’s waist. A familiar hand palmed his ass.

“Go. Shower.” He jerked his head to the bags where they were draped over a branch. “I’ve got this.”

“Fine.” Peter gave in with fake reluctance. “Don’t let dinner burn.”

“It wouldn’t make a difference,” Stiles observed. “I don’t remember what apples taste like.”

_“Stiles.”_

“Fine fine. I won’t let it burn. Now shoo!”

***

It was amazing that dumping a few gallons of murky water on himself could improve anything, but that was the reality of life now.

They ate quietly, intent on their meager dinners of hot MRE cereal. Peter overlooked the way that the lion’s portion of the meal went into his bowl. It didn’t hurt anything if Stiles thought he’d managed to be sly about it.

In their shared bedroll, they finally relax in the circle of Stiles’ spell, a simple ward for them to remain unseen.

Stiles lay still, tired but not exhausted by the hike. Peter trailed his fingers over the ends of shaggy, brown hair. There was no use for hair product anymore, even if they could find it. It was unlikely that he’d ever see Stiles with that overstyled MTV hair again.

His heart squeezed painfully at the thought. 

“What’s the matter?” Stiles whispered, tense as a bowstring and ready for danger from whatever he’d read in Peter’s body. 

He forced himself to lay flat under the blanket and relax, muscle by muscle. _For Stiles’ sake,_ he reminded himself.

“Nothing, darling.”

Stiles thumped him on the chest. “Liar.”

Peter caught his hand. “You wound me.” He kissed Stiles’ fingers, pressing his lips to the calloused pads.

“Hey, Peter.” Stiles took his hand back and regarded him with dark eyes. “It was a pretty good day, right?”

 _Of course it was a good day. We’re together: Peter and Stiles. I saw your body gleaming under firelight and bloody water. You’re looking at me like I’m the only thing you see. I don’t know what a better day looks like in this reality._

But these truths would be too much, too heavy for this night and their fragile bond, so Peter didn’t let a trace of them escape. A lopsided smile tugged at his mouth. “Yeah,” he said, “it was pretty good.”

He inched forward to cover Stiles with the blanket and his body so they lay skin-to-skin by the campfire. With exquisite slowness, Peter inhaled and exhaled, chasing Stiles’ breath until their mouths touched. Stiles parted his lips under Peter’s, body opening to him, soft and trusting here as he couldn’t be in the daylight.

Love rose up in Peter, a wave breaking on the cliffs. _If this is all I can have, then I want it. As much as I can get._

He stroked the lean line of the body under him, smooth hands playing over the human-rough skin, delighting in the ragged gasps and cries he drew from Stiles.

As always, the hardened pebbles of his nipples proved a temptation Peter couldn’t deny. He pinched them, alternating pressure and intensity with an absolute knowledge born from experience.

By the time Peter released them, they’d gone from red to nearly violet, and Stiles had been reduced to hiccupping cries as he strained to rock his erection against Peter’s inner thigh.

Stiles whined again, sniffling wetly on Peter’s throat. “Please,” he begged. “Let me come. Please, Peter. Wanna come for you.”

“Shhh,” he soothed. “Soon.”

Stiles sobbed.

“Will you let me fuck you tonight?” Peter stroked one nub, cruelly twisting the other. Stiles twitched beneath him, gasping for air. “I want to feel you,” he growled, teeth aching in his jaw. “Just wet enough to let me in. Your tight hole squeezing me like a fist.”

“God yes!” Stiles spread his legs wider. “Fuck me fuck me fuck me.”

Peter laid two fingers on Stiles’ mouth. “Suck.”

Stiles laved at them, wet and messy, thoroughly covering them in his saliva. Peter’s hand dripped when he brought it down between their legs, bypassing their erections to prod gently at Stiles’ ass. 

“Relax, baby,” he said, pinching idly at one of Stiles’ sore nipples. He pressed in to the sound of Stiles’ gasp.

“Ugh, Peter.” Stiles bucked his hips, clutching at the finger, fucking himself on it like it was Peter’s cock. “More. I need more.”

“Greedy,” he murmured. Stiles’ body accepted the second as eagerly as the first, always ready to take any part of Peter inside.

For a few minutes, the slow slide of his fingers was enough, but soon Stiles was ready, arching his back in a wordless question. 

Peter had a brief flash of regret as his fingers slipped out of Stiles, but that was replaced as he brought his cockhead to the barely stretched entrance. 

“Deep breath, baby,” he said and slid home. Stiles shuddered and went limp, allowing Peter free rein. 

It was quick and rough. In the dirt at the end of the world. With the last two people who should have been together.

This should have been terrible, the worst sex they’d ever had.

But as Peter rocked forward, allowing the rhythmic spasms of Stiles’ ass to bring them both closer to orgasm, he knew that this was it. _I couldn’t wish for better if I had this for the rest of my life._

Buoyed by the tide of emotion, Peter felt himself nearing orgasm. He drove his hips forward and bit Stiles’ neck and shoulders, laid frantic kisses in a line to pointed clavicles, careful to keep his teeth only human-sharp. 

“Come for me,” Peter gasped. _“Now Stiles.”_

At that order, that plea, Stiles bowed his back and shouted, hips bucking wildly. He clenched down hard on Peter, pushing him over the edge.

Sticky and sated, they lay together, faces illuminated by the low-burning embers. Words weren’t necessary with them, not for this.

Or they hadn’t been. 

Unlike those other times, Stiles reached out, tangling their fingers together. His face held a question that Peter was hesitant to acknowledge.

“Hey, Peter,” he said. “You know that poem. My sleepytime poem.”

“What about it?”

“What made you choose it?”

He froze. Despite his best efforts, Stiles had brought him to the precipice once again, and not with something so simple as sex. No, this had the potential to change everything between them.

Blithely ignoring the non-reaction, Stiles went on, “It’s just that I’m having trouble sleeping tonight.” Stiles yawned wide enough to almost split his face.

Peter raised an eyebrow at his blatant lie. “Are you?”

“Yeah.” Stiles firmed his jaw, a familiar, belligerent glint in his eye. “I am. So why don’t you break out my favorite lullaby?”

“Fine.” Peter cleared his throat. “Tell me about—”

“No. Um. What about just the end. The last few lines.”

Peter frowned. The last few lines? _But why?_ Was this his karmic punishment? To be tortured by Stiles?

“Please?” Stiles asked. He squeezed Peter’s hand. “It. It’s my favorite part.” And in a voice so low that it barely registered on werewolf hearing, Stiles admitted, “It reminds me of you.”

Vicious tendrils of hope dug roots into his heart.

“Okay then,” Peter agreed. “We’ll go to the end.” He pulled Stiles over, cradling him, like usual. “Look at the light through the windowpane. That means it’s noon. That means,” his voice caught, “we’re inconsolable.”

Stiles kissed Peter’s chest. “Go on,” he whispered.

“Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us. These, our bodies, possessed by light.” Peter exhaled and held it for a long five count before filling his lungs again. “Tell me we’ll never get used to it.”

His words reverberated through the night; the last branch split and fell into the embers. Flames flared up, throwing shadows over their faces, but it was as bright as noon to a werewolf’s eyes.

Stiles moved his lips, mouthing words to himself. _Love too, will ruin us. Our bodies possessed by light._ Emotions flitted across his face, too fast to categorize except for the last: satisfaction.

Finally, he smiled at Peter, not the pale shade of happiness that he’d shown so often, but something full and bright—joy sharp enough to cut. 

“Hey, Peter.”

“Yes, Stiles.”

“Even if we found everyone tomorrow. If I got my dad back… You’ve ruined me. I’ll never get used to it.”

“Me too, Stiles.”

“Good.” Pleased by the admission, he yawned again, wider than the last, and tucked his face into Peter’s neck. Stiles sighed, and in the space of a few breaths, he fell asleep.

Peter spent long minutes staring at the sleeping Stiles, as though he could swallow him into his eyes, before sighing. Stiles Stilinski had always been too much to capture through sight or force or guile. It was only now, by Stiles’ own will, that Peter had been given this illusion of snaring his prey.

Tenderly, Peter stroked the complementary curves of stubborn jaw and cupid’s bow lips, murmuring, _“I made this place for you. A place for to love me. If this isn’t a kingdom then I don’t know what is.”_

**Author's Note:**

> The poem that Peter uses to help Stiles sleep is [Scheherazade](http://www.fishousepoems.org/scheherazade).
> 
> The last lines, “I made this place for you. A place for to love me. If this isn’t a kingdom then I don’t know what is.” are from, [Snow and Dirty Rain](https://subwayphilosophy.wordpress.com/2008/06/23/its-not-because-our-hearts-are-large-theyre-not), another poem by Siken.
> 
> As always, please let me know what you thought or if you noticed a typo/error or other concern. For private conversation, you can find me [on tumblr](http://dialmformaledictions.tumblr.com).
> 
> Check out the moodboard [here](http://dialmformaledictions.tumblr.com/post/174812088071/the-devourers).


End file.
